Police in Western Australia have arrested a 24-year-old man and charged him in connection with the murders of three generations of one family. The mass murderer killed a total of five members from the same family, three toddlers, their mother, and their grandmother. WA Police identified the youngest victims as a set of twins and their sibling, Charlotte, Alice, and Beatrix Quinn. The fourth victim was identified as the children's mother, Mara Quinn, and her mother, Beverly Quinn.

The bodies of all five victims were found in their home in Bedford, Perth this weekend. Police who were first to respond to the gruesome scene recalled the television still being on giving an eerie feeling to the home. The 24-year-old suspect surrendered himself to a regional WA police station in Karratha. He will appear in court before a Perth Magistrate Monday through a video feed from Karratha where he will face five counts of murder.

WA Today reported that Mara Quinn lived at the Bedford home with her partner Anthony Harvey. A local resident named Janelle Dorant said in an interview with News Corp that she met Mara Quinn while working in Karratha on a mine. Dorant reported that Quinn was several years older than her partner indicating implying a possible connection between her alleged partner Anthony Harvey and the man in his early twenties who turned himself into police.

"I just don’t understand," Dorant said. "She was always happy and very nurturing when she fell pregnant. She didn’t have a partner, but then it just all seemed to fall into place." Dorant told News Corp she suspected her friend was dead when she first heard reports of the killings on the news. "She is lovely, I’m shocked," she said. WA has seen a total of twenty-three women, children and men killed by domestic-related violence this year alone. This brings the total domestic-related fatalities to more than two a month.

The home on Coode St. and the surrounding area where the victims lived was sealed off by investigators around 2 p.m. AEST yesterday. The scene was quickly flooded by homicide detectives and forensic teams who used command vehicles and a pavilion to establish a base of operations at the scene of the crime. The scene was so gruesome that a special police chaplain was dispatched to the scene to support the investigators.

The two police officers who were initially dispatched to the home to check the man's claims were especially affected by the depravity of the murders and in need of support. The man who turned himself in to police is said to "be known" by the victims and was charged with the murders of the five family members just hours after the discovery of the bodies. The crime has also left neighbors in shock, some of whom reported being aware of the couple and their three children but had not seen them in days.

One neighbor named Desrae Cambos said in an interview with PerthNow that the family had lived at the home for about four years. Cambos reported that the father ran a lawn-mowing and landscaping business but she assumed the family had gone on vacation since she had not seen the father's vehicle parked in the driveway since last week. Another neighbor said she would often see children playing in the front yard of the house. "How could someone do that to their own children?" the neighbor said. "It's sickening to think someone could do that."

Assistant Commissioner Paul Steel of the Metropolitan Region referred to the murders as a "heartbreaking tragedy". Assistant Commissioner Steel said, "Sadly at that location police have located the bodies of a number of deceased people including women and children. This is a tragic event and it will no doubt have an impact on not only on the family and friends of the deceased but on the whole of the community, those first responders who are faced with attending a scene with deceased people. I can assure people that the WA Police Force are conducting a thorough and proper investigation to determine what events led to this tragic matter."

Assistant Commissioner Steel added, "The homicide squad currently have teams of detectives on the ground, accompanied by specialist forensic police who are meticulously working their way through this crime scene. It does send a ripple through the community of Western Australia." One neighbor who would frequently walk past the victim's home said, "It's taken us by complete shock," she said. "It's just horrific on every level."

The gruesome murders follow just months after seven people were found dead at a rural property in Osmington in South West Perth. That scene saw a mother, her four children, and two grandparents shot to death. The victims were identified as Katrina Miles, her parents Cynda and Peter Miles, and her four children. That mass shooting has been described as Australia's worst mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre. The shooting in Osmington was determined to be a murder-suicide.